NOAA Collaboration on Aerosol Monitoring in China and South Africa

October 7, 2005

With funding from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), two aerosol
systems designed and built by researchers at the NOAA ESRL Global
Monitoring Division (GMD) have been deployed to remote sites in China and
South Africa to measure aerosol properties relevant to global climate change.
These systems are carbon copies of systems operating at NOAA Atmospheric
Baseline Observatories.

On September 12, the system installed by a NOAA scientist at the Mount
Waliguan Baseline Observatory in western China became fully operational.
An identical system will be installed at the Cape Point Baseline Observatory,
South Africa, in late October. These new stations will expand NOAA's
network of global aerosol monitoring sites that, in addition to the
NOAA Baseline Observatories, now include data from GMD installed systems in
Alert, Canada; Lamont, Oklahoma; Brownsville, Illinois; and Cape San Juan,
Puerto Rico.

Data from all the stations is sent in near real time to a central computer
at NOAA/ESRL where it is checked daily. Remote trouble shooting of
instruments can be conducted over the Internet and operating parameters of
the instruments adjusted from Boulder.

Background: Decreasing the uncertainties associated with aerosol
radiative forcing is currently a major NOAA research thrust for
quantifying climate forcing. Since aerosols are inhomogeneous in the
troposphere and have relatively short atmospheric lifetimes,
measurements must be made of different types of aerosols at locations in
many regions of the globe to determine how aerosol particles are affecting
the radiative balance of the Earth s atmosphere. The NOAA/ESRL aerosol
system is considered the best and most reliable available for these purposes.

Significance: These collaboration are beneficial to NOAA in that
global network expansion was achieved with funding from other agencies,
the measurement systems are identical, and cooperative agreements
guarantee NOAA full access to, and control over, the data and the
monitoring strategies. A new Baseline Station under construction on a
mountain in northern Taiwan by the Taiwanese Environmental Protection
Agency, to be operational in 2007, will install the same aerosol
monitoring system to be fabricated by NOAA/ESRL.